April 24, 2013

Forgiving the Unforgivable

I have a pastor friend who has written a thoughtful blog post on forgiveness in the wake of the Boston bombings. His initial take is different than mine. He’s got me thinking about forgiving the
unforgivable.

Maybe it’s too easy for me to look at the accused bombing suspect,
Dzokhar Tsarnaev, and see a broken and hurting kid. He is, after all, half a continent away,
safely in the hospital, and he didn’t hurt anyone I love. He’s not really my enemy, so if I can love him and forgive him from this safe
distance, it doesn’t reflect any particular virtue in me.

In a way, Tsarnaev, or any public bad guy we could think of,
is a sort of straw man. We set him up as
a case-in-point, a generic enemy. We
test on him our resolve to be forgiving, if we have such resolve. What
would I do if…? Even if I don’t ask
the question out loud, or even internally, specifically, intentionally, I’m
sounding the depths – or shallows – of my own capacity to say, with Jesus, “Father,
forgive them…”

There’s something so comfortingly clear about someone who
hurts innocent bystanders. We know who’s
right, who’s been wronged. It’s why we
like old-time westerns or action movies where there’s no moral ambiguity and
the man in the white hat will always stand against and overcome the man in the
black hat. In real life, in my
commonplace, quotidian encounters, it’s not so clear.

I hurt other people.
They hurt me. It’s not a bullet
or a bomb, but a careless word or look or tone.
Sometimes it’s not so careless, but stealthily planned to hurt, to wreak
a little bit of vengeance in the name of self-defense. I’ve been hurt; I want to hurt someone, to
release my pain by inflicting it on you.
At first, it feels good not to forgive, to give like for like, like
scratching an itch. But it doesn’t
really help, because the itch is a symptom, not the disease. I will scratch and scratch until I’m the one
who’s bleeding.

As long as I keep looking outside, at some enemy who is set
against me, I will want to strike back, and my wound will never heal. In a way, it doesn’t matter whether I harbor
the unwillingness to forgive against my neighbor or against the Osama bin
Ladens or Adam Lanzas of the world. “Forgive
us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” reminds me to count
the cost to my own soul when I bind that which I’m called to loose. If I hold a grudge against the most distant
enemy, my grudge will maintain a hold on me.

I agree with Pastor Rob, that forgiving doesn’t necessarily
mean forgetting. I have known enough
people who have been harmed – physically, emotionally, spiritually – by people
close to them to know that forgetting can mean inviting further abuse. That’s not what forgiveness is about. I have seen those same people, though,
genuinely forgive acts of violence, lack of love, cruelty, neglect, and
abandonment – and experience healing transformation in their own souls in the
process.

We are called to
forgive the unforgivable, but it’s a mistake to assume that it’s simply an act
of charity toward the offender. Forgiveness
is finally a choice to allow my own soul to heal.